Warriors of Darkness

[WhiteTerror]

I've noticed a discrepancy. Not sure if it has been brought up before.

This post details that the black mage from the CGI hyur's party is the elezen female(not the elezen male)

But this black mage has a male voice. Now I realize that the warriors of darkness don't have to represent the characters from the CGI but since every other member is the same - why deviate?

Thoughts?

[Eloah]

This was asked and answered during some event, a fan fest maybe. Yoshi-P's answer was that these versions of the warriors, The Warriors of Darkness, are from a different plane of existence. He said that while the one from the promotion art and CGI cut-scenes is in fact female, the Warrior of Darkness parallel is a male. Why this was done I'm not sure. Maybe it was a nod to the Elezen male they lost originally? The thing I find funny is they drop a hint of meeting the party one day, so why not keep everything the same? But canonically, the Warriors of Light congruent to us are the promo art for each job. That would mean, Monk, Bard, BLM, RDM, WHM, SCH,and AST are all female, notice a lack of tanks, and all the healer, T.T . SAM might also be female since the art is very androgynous, though if you look at the neck it appears thicker than you'd think a females would be, and that's saying something for an Elezen, lol.

Hope that helps some

[Vidu]

If you look at the opening of A Realm Reborn, you'll notice that the Warriors of Darkness do represent the CGI - the black mage in that party is pretty clearly a male elezen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h542YbZuwkQ#t=7m15s - have a look for yourself.

The question now would be: Why did they deviate from the 1.0 opening with the ARR one?
Seeing how there was a male elezen involved in the 1.0 opening, my guess would be that they didnt excatly change that but cut the female elezen - for some reason.
So the male elezen is actually there - just the female one disappears.

[Anonymoose]

I had always assumed that they were deliberately lampshading the discrepancies between what Square Enix Visual Works knows (they get the details over a year in advance and sometimes things change) and how the final version of the game ends up.

In the patch and character artwork, the BLM has clearly feminine features. In the CG videos, it seems to be the male Elezen rather than the female in spite of comments to the contrary (even in A New Beginning). The Warriors of Darkness also used the "non-existent" skills used by the CG team, like the conjurer-turned-white-mage Lalafell enfiring an arrow.

Recall that canonically the trailer party is kind of us but also kind of their own people, so Derplander coming face to face with Darklander shows they're definitely not the "same" and the Warriors of Darkness just took advantage of their wiggle room in being new characters who were thematically based on the "Generic Adventurers" from the trailer party.

[Enkidoh]

I think by this stage we can kind of handwave the discrepancy away like what Moose said: Evil!Derplander and his ilk are from a parallel Hydaelyn so as things already diverged from 'our' Hydaelyn, whose to say that it was the female GLA in the 1.0 opening that Derplander did not end up meeting and instead reunited with the snooty male elezen from the Adventurer's Guild? (And thus he then became the BLM not the female elezen GLA from the Echo scene). I admit, I'm grabbing at straws here...

Also, furthering the handwave, is it's sadly not the only mistake in narrative that Square Enix Visual Works inadvertently made - the Heavensward opening after all shows Hraesvelgar (along with a whole swarm of his clones!) attacking Ishgard, not Nidhogg who it should be - apparently this was simply due to using the wrong concept art and by the time SE Visual Works realized the mistake, it was too late to change the CG so they left it in (and simply disguised Hraesvelgar with red colouring to make him seem like he's just a generic dragon). But it's still glaring if you compare it with in-game events.

So it shows don't take what is shown in the CG videos too seriously in regards to in-game events, they're pretty stylized for dramatic effect.

[Anonymoose]

Also, furthering the handwave, is it's sadly not the only mistake in narrative that Square Enix Visual Works

And that's not even to mention that the guild the party was hanging out at in the 1.0 opening was supposed to be The Drowning Wench.

Talk about how much can change in a year.

[Enkidoh]

Indeed Moose - although having the aetheryte in the centre of the Adventurer's Guild was never going to end well! (For all his failings in how mishandled 1.0's development was, you have to commend Tanaka for at least seeing that was not going to be a good idea and changed it quickly accordingly).

Although the only real clue that it was actually even meant to be the Drowning Wench in the first place was the guildleve plate in Derplander's hand clearly had 'Limsa Lominsa' written on it, the place's entire decor ended up being changed so radically I always assumed that was meant to be Ishgard's Adventurer's Guild not Limsa's! (And of course the Forgotten Knight ended up looking nothing like that either).

[Eloah]

If you look at the opening of A Realm Reborn, you'll notice that the Warriors of Darkness do represent the CGI - the black mage in that party is pretty clearly a male elezen.

But the opening of ARR is the exact same cinematic as the end of the 1.X series. And given that the date of it's end and the date of Koji Fox's explanation are only about a week apart, then it would imply that the party is the one he mentioned, 3 female 2 males. Now is this a handwave, maybe, but its what we are told is Fact now. Remember 1.X was "ending" and transitioning to 2.0 before the service actually stopped. So the team currently working on the story were the ones to "handwave" and fix a lot of the 1.X "loose ends". It may be a retcon, but since the BLM attire prevents finer details, all we can say for sure is its an Elezen; unless stated otherwise, as we were.

Additionally, besides the Patches where we encountered the Warriors of Darkness, you'll notice we haven't seen that party since. Instead it seems like they have opted for just using Derplander/Meteor, so far, since now he is a part of the scions, and they act as his "party".

But Moose and Enkidoh are correct, since there can be a major disconnect sometimes between departments and creating a Video Game is a very long and drawn out process, the CGI cinematics might not always be true to their intended vision. Whether they actively admit it, like with Hraesvelgar, or do a handwave to explain something that seems inaccurate, is up to their discretion.

We can only go by what they tell us.

[SicariusSeven]

The real answer. The Elezen Warrior of Darkness just used a fantasia potion.